


reverse matrix

by jessequicksters



Series: we didn't start the fire [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Body Swap, Gen, of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessequicksters/pseuds/jessequicksters
Summary: Nate rushes into Wally's room while he’s in the middle of his afternoon meditation flow and knocks his incense burners on the floor.Wally opens an eye, palms still laid out on top of his knees, cross-legged on the floor. Nate has that wild look in his eyes that spells chaos.“Dude, you gotta see this.”(for the prompt: swap abilities, eobard thawne + gideon)
Series: we didn't start the fire [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885693
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: we didn't start the fire





	reverse matrix

Sometimes, just sometimes, Wally regretted ever stepping foot on the Waverider. Sure, the speedforce had an infinite supply of weird, but at least it was starting to make sense.

Nate rushes into his room while he’s in the middle of his afternoon meditation flow and knocks his incense burners on the floor.

Wally opens an eye, palms still laid out on top of his knees, cross-legged on the floor. Nate has that wild look in his eyes that spells chaos.

“Dude, you _gotta_ see this.”

Wally puts his Kid Flash suit on and zips out to the bridge, where everyone’s standing around the main table squabbling among themselves. Mick has his heat gun out and pointed at the main computer, Amaya’s trying to calm him down while Sara and Rip have their faces in their hands, shaking their heads as they’re trying to figure things out.

“Hey, guys, what’s going on?” Wally cuts in, as everyone turns to look at him.

“Ah, Mr. West. So nice of you to join us,” a familiar voice says.

He notices then, the blur of Gideon’s head buried behind the others.

Except, it’s not Gideon.

It’s—

“Thawne?” Wally speeds towards the table and scans through the setting readings, trying to find an explanation for any of it, of this, because this man is a psychopath who _cannot_ be here.

Thawne laughs, all smarmy smiles and sickening pleasure. The man hasn’t changed a single bit.

“Zari and Jax are taking a look at the mainframe, but apparently, there’s nothing wrong with it,” Sara says, raising her arms up defensively.

“Poor Gideon,” Amaya says, turning towards Sara and Rip. “Where do you think she went?”

Thawne rolls his eyes. “You know, sometimes, I actually feel sorry for all of you. Pure despair. You’re all still so, incredibly, stupid.”

“Shut up, apparition,” Mick growls. Thawne ignores him and continues.

“This has nothing to do with the mainframe. I was chasing your ship through the speedforce while someone was trying to fuse Gideon’s matrix with the temporal zone to try to track me, but—”

“—We didn’t account for the fact that your negative speedforce required a reverse matrix, too,” Wally finishes. He needs to have a talk with Zari after this. This has her name spelled all over it.

Thawne smiles at him, the way he used to smile at Barry—with a flash of surprise and swelling pride. It’s easy to think of how he gained their trust so easily; the man could flip like a switch in the blink of an eye.

He would do anything—be anything—he needed to be in the moment. A mentor. A friend. An ally. A rival.

Right now, it seems like he’s in the mood to slip back into the mask of the benevolent scientist he once paraded himself as.

“At least there are _two_ great minds on this ship,” Thawne says, nodding at Wally.

Wally scowls at him and rushes to the engine room where Zari and Jax are trying to reset the matrix.

“Don’t do that!” Wally says, zipping over to stop them and type in the correct calculations that should be able to recreate the correct fusion with the Reverse Flash’s negative speedforce.

Zari drops her face in guilty admission. “Sorry ‘bout that. I should’ve consulted you before trying out my little experiment. It’s not exactly fun having a serial killer as our omnipresent AI.”

“You can’t outrun me, Mr. West,” Thawne’s voice comes back on the line. _Omnipresent._ Add omni-annoying-as-hell to the list, too. “Good start on the coding lines, but allow me to finish it in order to avoid any further mistakes. Now, on your end, you’re going to need to generate my negative speedforce to power the blast.”

“Blast?” Jax and Zari say in unison.

Wally sighs.

“You know it’s the only way,” Thawne reminds him.

“He’s right,” Wally eventually admits. “But I can’t generate your negative speedforce.”

A rift opens in the universe then. It happens so fast it would’ve been imperceptible to anyone without super speed. Wally sees a spinning whirpool of ashen orange clouds, with streaks of white lightning and crackling light.

He senses a new entity in the speedforce—the negative speedforce.

She comes out as a woman. A woman who looks, and feels, somehow familiar.

Her suit is sleek-black. Simple and clean, with a white-lined mask to match. Her eyes are bright and hopeful, a little like Jesse’s, though she looks slightly older.

“Hello, there, Mr. West. Apologies I’m late.”

“Gideon?” Wally says, eyes nearly popping out of his skull, probably. “You’re. . .”

“Hot?” Zari says, also very much eyes-wide-open about this whole thing.

“Oh, I know what you and Rip get up to. I’ve processed millions of zettabytes of footage of the archives,” Thawne says.

Jax beams at Gideon, as if they’re best friends. “You’re a speedster!”

“I must say,” she says, looking down at herself. “I find the speedforce rather thrilling, but I would much rather process the world around me in binary code again.”

Wally’s never been a mentor to a speedster before. It’s actually really exciting. Gideon should be a quick learner, though, fingers crossed.

“Drop us off at the longest stretch of cleared land you can find. Run the matrix and we’ll meet you at the temporal zone and recreate the blast,” Wally orders Thawne who, for once, obliges without complaint.

Gideon zips around the ship so fast even Wally can barely count the nanoseconds when she gets back.

“Just stretching my legs for a little warm-up. Now, tell me how fast I should run—preferably in exact machs down to the decimal?”

**Author's Note:**

> part of yet another quarantine fic challenge with [illea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illea)


End file.
